Having a coupon while shopping counts as one of the best feelings in the world. Who does not like discounts on their favorite T-shirts, dresses, electronic gadgets, and more?
All of us crave amazing discounts on our favourite things. We all know what a coupon does and thus, we never miss any opportunity to grab the best deals on our loved products. However, with growing expenses, it has become difficult to avail of all the possible discounts that our digital destinations offer. Many websites help their users get decent discounts on the first purchase or during the first set of purchases, however, getting good discounts on the products even after that sounds challenging these days.
This is why, here, we have covered the best coupon websites in India that you should not definitely check once. The listed websites are some of the most reliable and effective coupon websites in India that will surely amaze you with the range of deals and discounts they offer. Also, you can use them as many times as you like. So, hop on!
GrabOn has reportedly helped users save around Rs 4300 crore a year annualy. The website was founded in the year 2013, and now it has more than 4,000 merchant partners with the rank of the best coupon website in India. Not only in India, but the success story of GrabOn has also been popularized in the foreign market as well.
CashKaro
CashKaro | Coupon websites
This is another best coupon website in India. CashKaro is getting pretty popular among users nowadays. It provides unbelievable discounts as well as cashback offers. CashKaro has a partnership with more than 500 e-commerce websites. The websites include Yatra, Snapdeal, Amazon, MakeMyTrip, etc.
Couponswala
Couponswala | Best site for coupon codes in India
CouponsWala is the name and savings is the game. You are not just greeted with the latest coupons and discounts like other websites here. You will find several articles and blogs with trending offers and information on brands that will make purchasing anything online a fun and convivial ordeal. 10 million+ recorded impressions per month, 600,000+ monthly visitors, 500,000+ sign-ups for newsletters and 6000+ coupons dispensed every day for CouponsWala. With coupons, blogs, and buying guides, you will be up to date with the latest information only on CouponsWala.
Headquartered in Bengaluru, CouponsWala is one of the most popular coupons and deals websites that offer Coupons, Offers, Deals, and Discounts for its users from a range of stores that the company operates both via online and offline methods. Furthermore, Couponswala is also designed to provide various real-time shopping offers from the top websites including Flipkart, Paytm, Amazon, MakeMyTrip, and more.
MyDala
MyDala | Coupon code websites India
MyDala is one of the coupon websites in India that offer simply the best to its customers. Here coupons are available on every merchandise. The slogan of the company is ‘har baargain’. This allows the customers to choose their favorite products at a very lesser price. These coupons provide services in major cities such as Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai, and Bangalore. Also, this website is functional in cities like Nagpur and Pune.
Not only discounts, but CouponDunia also helps you get promos, cashback, and other offers too. It claims to be the ‘digital market place’. Approximately over 10 billion customers have visited CouponDunia to date. Also, there are 2000+ online stores of the brand, which again serves over 7.5 million email subscribers.
MaddyCoupons
MaddyCoupons | Coupon website
If you shop regularly online, MaddyCoupons can be one of the best coupon websites in India for you. The key features of this website include the regularly updated discount options for different sites that you can opt from. It also has an assortment of coupons for famous sites like Snapdeal, Paytm, Flipkart, and more. Besides, Maddycoupons also has a scope of exclusive coupons for various categories like electronic gadgets and fashion.
NearBuy
Nearbuy – Discounts for shopping
Nearbuy is one of the best coupon websites in India. This is an extended website of Groupon, which operates globally. It is usually functional in 35 cities and offers coupons and discounts under more than 18 different categories. Not only online, but it also offers discounts offline. This app provides 50,000 merchants spread over 100,000 unique locations. So, this is an absolute website to try on.
MyTokri
MyTokri – Discounts for shopping
An exclusive site that offers you cashback in mobile recharges as well. This is what makes it stand out from the other websites. Other than that, it also offers a bunch of other deals as well. It is also easy and convenient to access all products ranging from clothing to technology.
Ranked as the third-best coupon website in India, CouponRaja, offers various deals and coupons on every stuff you purchase. It was started in 2011 and is still operating across the country. From fashion, and technology to food delivery, CouponRaja offers discounts and coupon codes that are easy to access.
CouponzGuru
CouponzGuru | Best site for coupon codes in India
From mobile purchases to fashion, flight, and even daily deals of the day, CouponzGuru never fails to impress you. It helps you to get almost 80% off as well as free coupon codes, promotion codes, discount deals and promo offers for online shopping in India. This website started its journey in the e-commerce world in 2011. It is still running successfully serving customers across the country.
CouponMoto
CouponMoto | Best site for coupon codes in India
The moto of CouponMoto is to make online shopping more efficient and affordable to the customers. The company claims to bring in ‘Unconditional Way Of Shopping’. With CouponMoto, people can enjoy discounts on online shopping using the coupons and promo codes available on the website. One of the popular coupon websites in India, it provides a one-stop shopping destination all the time.
Coupons and discounts during special occasions work like bliss. So if you are going to attend a party, or celebrating your anniversary, you should not forget to get a glimpse of these coupon websites in India. You can also share a few of them with your friends and acquaintances. Sharing also gets you many offers, besides caring.
FAQs
What is Coupon Code?
In e-commerce and online shopping a coupon code, or promo code, is a computer-generated code, consisting of letters or numbers that consumers can enter into a promotional box on a site’s shopping cart (or checkout page) to obtain a discount on the current purchase.
What is a promo code example?
The definition of a promotional code is a series of letters or numbers that allow you to get a discount on something. When an online store allows you to get 10% off your purchase by entering the word SAVE into a field in the checkout form, SAVE is an example of a promotional code.
How do online coupon codes work?
Online coupons commonly require a minimum order amount in order to be redeemed. In other words, you have to spend a certain amount on eligible items before you can receive the discount. Also know that codes can apply to most items a store sells, or only to specific items or categories.
How does a coupon work?
A coupon is the same as cash. For example, if you have a $1.00 off coupon on a box of cereal, the cashier takes the coupon as though it were cash. It’s not that common anymore, but some stores will even double a coupon’s face value. Once the cashier accepts the coupon, the store has a problem.
What are some of the popular discount websites in India?
Honey is a software extension that helps you find suitable coupon codes for the product you have sold. Honey was started in 2012 in Los Angeles with the sole purpose of helping buyers find genuine codes. It started small but with time, it got a lot of success.
Today, it works with more than 30,000 retailers. It has an extension for many browsers like Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Opera, and many other prominent browsers.
Within its short journey, it has earned a lot of loyal customers over time. These customers use the services of Honey almost daily for their purchases. Honey gets mostly used when they want to order pizza. It works more efficiently in this field because this idea came to co-founder Ryan Hudson when he could not get any reliable coupons when he was buying Pizza. In this article, we will look at the business model of Honey in detail.
Honey was started in 2012 with the intention of providing reliable information of coupons. The idea came to the co-founder Ryan Hudson when he could not find any reliable coupon to buy pizza. Even after finding a reliable coupon, he found that it was a tedious task to find proper codes. He thought of automating the process completely. He started coding the extension for the Google Chrome browser.
At first, Honey was not so successful. Both of the founders George Ruan and Ryan Hudson after developing their minimal viable product went to various investors who did not fund them at all. As a lot of investors were turning down their offer, the founders got frustrated. Soon they were out of funds and, Hudson started working in an ad tech company.
Honey Founders
Things turned around when somebody mentioned Honey on Reddit. Soon Reddit started flooding with praises of Honey as people many had installed the extension and were delighted by its usage. In 2016, they managed to get their first funding of $4 million.
In 2017 alone, it had 5 million downloads. In 2020, the downloads reached to 10 million.
Business Model of Honey
Honey makes money from affiliate marketing. Honey does not have any deals with the stores directly. They work with various affiliate marketing platforms. Currently, Honey is working with about 20 affiliate marketing platforms. Their platform includes big companies like eBay, Rakuten, Groupon, Commission Junction, ShareASale, and many more.
Apart from that, the company has set up some unique ways to grow themselves. Honey has set up clever cashback programs which will help them retain customers. This will lead to the long-term growth of the Honey platform as it is increasing its customer base.
Honey has cleverly designed interfaces that would enhance compatibility with the user. It has a feature where it can compare different products of the same category and show their price comparison to the customer. Customers also receive a cashback under the Honey gold program. This increases the recall value of the customer. It also increases their market share.
Honey Gold Program
How does Honey make money?
Basically, Honey earns money from affiliate marketing but it has many other features integrated to enhance its affiliate marketing business. Honey is a unique product and it has also positioned itself cleverly in order to capture the majority market share.
Honey has a gold program where they give customers some cashback from the affiliate earnings. Thus it is a win-win situation. Through this, Honey retains more customers. Also, the customer is benefitting by saving more.
Droplist
Honey Droplist
In this droplist, you can check the cost drop for the selected item. It helps the consumers to make better decisions and, it also enhances consumer convenience.
Price history feature
Honey Price History
You can also see the price history of the product with the Honey extension. It helps the customer make better decisions. For example, if the product is showing a periodical dip then, the customer can delay his/her purchase and wait till the price drops again.
Amazon’s best price
With the extension, you can choose the best Amazon price. The honey extension shows the price of different products available for the selected item.
Savings finder
Honey Savings Finder
It automatically applies coupons from other prominent sites. This is the main feature why Honey is so attractive.
Honey PayPal Acquisition
Honey had slowly evolved from a small business to a billion-dollar evaluation company. They had specifically integrated such features which would enhance their customer adaptability.
With time it positioned itself competitively and grew as a unique company. Things started turning and, Honey generated revenue. Their business model worked perfectly and, investors flocked towards the company.
PayPal noticed the company and started negotiations with the founders. In 2020, January PayPal acquired Honey for 4 billion dollars. PayPal integrated Honey with its platform.
PayPal acquired Honey because they don’t have much chance of collecting data from a user. Honey is an extension that plays a major role in the buying behaviour of the consumer and acquires those data. This data will help PayPal acquire more data regarding its users. This helps them understand the likes and dislikes of the people.
Honey has slowly but steadily grown its business. Initially, they started small and then went on to implement some clever strategies to make itself more user-friendly. They acquired more customers and retained them with much-shrewed techniques. Their step-by-step proper implementation has made them a huge success.
FAQ
Who is the founder of Honey?
George Ruan and Ryan Hudson is the founder of Honey.
How does Honey app make money?
Honey makes money from the commission made on user transactions with partnering retailers.
Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by GrabOn.
The number of online shoppers in India is on a rise. As per a study conducted by Boston Consulting Group, there were 90 million online shoppers in India in 2017, and the numbers are increasing. The convenience of shopping from the comfort of one’s home, availability of a wide range of choices, and incurring lesser cost when compared to offline shopping are some of the major reasons why many prefer to shop online. Besides, the emergence of affiliate marketing companies offering attractive coupons and discounts on online shopping has made online shopping even more preferable. GrabOn is a startup that is helping more and more Indians fall in love with online shopping with all the irresistible offers and deals that it brings for various sites and brands.
GrabOn is helping Indians save big on online shopping. GrabOn provides the user with the latest deals, offers, coupons, and discounts across categories like Fashion, Food, Travel, Recharge, Entertainment, and more. They have now ventured into the e-Gift Cards space, providing discounted Gift Cards from top merchants like Amazon, Myntra, BookMyShow, Shoppers Stop, MakeMyTrip, PVR and more.
The end product delivery model is via digital dissemination of information, for e.g., providing information onscreen upon clicking, to access the same on website and mobile web, through emails, & SMS; and via physical dissemination of the same in a few use cases, e.g., paper coupons and gift cards directly to consumers.
GrabOn’s user-focused interface and non-intrusive coupon browsing experience combined with innovative and rich tech stack are designed based on customer feedback and consumer insights that they gather carefully.
Every time a shopper purchases a product/service online, orders food, or hails a cab, they look for savings. With GrabOn’s coupons, people can access deals with ease and security. Besides, with GrabOn’s Gift Cards platform, users are enabled to save on online gifting by availing various ongoing offers and exclusive deals. GrabOn offers its users the best and the latest coupon/promo codes, deals, offers, and gift cards. These coupons are genuine and are validated frequently by their team of in-house experts. GrabOn has been able to provide consistent, authentic services even on Gift Cards, owing to their position as industry leaders and due to its strategic alliances & relations with top clients. These coupons/deals can be redeemed, and Gift Cards can be purchased by visiting the website or directly through the mobile app.
Ashok Reddy is responsible for organizing, coordinating, and overseeing the company strategy in terms of business decisions, partnerships, and more. He is an alumnus (M.B.A., PGPMAX) of Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, and pursued executive MBA from Harvard Business School. Before founding GrabOn, he served as the president & co-founder of Sellers Commerce and Landmark IT Solutions. He served as the Chief Technology Officer position at SmartTouch Interactive and as the Vice President, Information Technology at IncentOne. Prior to that, he worked as a project manager at Infosys Technologies Ltd.
GrabOn Team
GrabOn’s current employee strength is 50. GrabOn boasts of a cool office space designed to bring out the best in its employees.
The team at GrabOn believes that a person can give his or her best when they are in a relaxed state of mind. And their cool office space bears testimony to this fact. Their workspace is the very definition of ”style means substance”. Elegant yet practical, GrabOn’s floor is divided into various zones which serve different purposes. There is an ‘Ideal Zone” where one can relax and engage in conversation with one’s own mind to produce exemplary and creative ideas – says Ashok
As the leader, Ashok believes in investing time in building and nurturing the company culture by engaging with the employees and helping them grow professionally while contributing to the overall growth of the organization.
GrabOn’s hiring structure is designed in a way that it selects not only the best talent but the right fit of candidates who share and believe in the company’s vision of helping India save on everything.
Grabon Coupons
GrabOn – How was it started?
While Ashok reddy was in the US working at the managerial position across several MNCs and Fortune 500 companies, he came across the multi-billion-dollar coupons industry. Such an encounter fascinated him and simultaneously realized the potential of the same industry in India. He, therefore, returned with the motive of setting up a coupons & deals company that will make online shopping affordable and comfortable. While most of the existing coupon websites would roll with a cookie-cutter version of a website, GrabOn dared to go with a platform that emphasized more on user experience and less on coupon listing. Within months of launch, the company registered huge footfall with visitors actively using GrabOn to redeem coupons and activate deals.
I have been blessed with a team of hardworking and passionate individuals who gathered actionable insights and data points based on months of extensive market evaluation, competitive research, and assessment of risks and growth possibilities – Ashok says speaking of GrabOn’s product validation stage
Once they gathered all the required information, the GrabOn team started working on designing the service, perfecting their business model, and simultaneously prepared their pitch deck and started networking with the right individuals and organizations. They started small and bootstrapped their way to the top of the industry.
The initial people who were a part of the discussion process during the early days of GrabOn were merchants mostly from the SME background, who supported a user-focused approach adopted by GrabOn.
The company’s growth has been possible because of our user-first approach, whether it is our offerings or the technology that we implement. The people with whom we initially discussed about GrabOn realized the potential of what we had and kept on pushing us till we had a huge traffic footfall and returning visitors, which in turn helped us become the #1 player in the industry
After a lot of deliberation, the GrabOn team finally zeroed in on GrabOn- signifying grabbing onto the right deal/coupon. The brand caters not only to the coupon users but also deal-seekers. However, unlike many of its competitors, the brand name does not include the word ‘coupon’.
GrabOn Logo
GrabOn’s tagline ‘Save on Everything’, is representative of the things the company wants to do i.e., help users save on anything and everything by availing the best deals, offers, and discounts.
GrabOn’s USP is its customer-centric approach, which translates into offering only up-to-date and verified coupons & deals helping its customers make a decisive choice. This, along with their completely ad-free, non-intrusive UI/UX and strategic alliances with top players from different verticals, is what makes it India’s most trusted savings destination.
GrabOn – Target Market
The industry that GrabOn operates in broadly includes coupons and deals, affiliate marketing, e-commerce, and online shopping. Their primary target market is basically the e-commerce segment in India, with a market cap of about USD 40 billion with a 30% Year-Over-Year growth. While the e-commerce market continues to grow, the competition between major brands will increase as they fight over gaining consumer share. With internet penetration happening across tier-3 and tier-4 cities, new consumer sectors will open up, providing an opportunity to smaller, niche brands to grow their local audience further through e-commerce. Affiliate Marketing has been one of the sectors providing the highest ROI to the e-commerce sector. In future, the collaboration between e-commerce companies and the affiliate marketing industry is only to grow further.
GrabOn – Business Model and Revenue Model
GrabOn operates on the B2C model. Their Business and Revenue model are based on coupon redemption, affiliate/performance marketing, direct partnerships with merchants, brand marketing services via their website, and Gift Cards sale. It is based on a cost-per-sale model generating revenue through end-user sale.
It generally works on Strategic business model by listing all the Top online brands/business in its platform. With a network of over 2000 Clients, some of the top clients of the company are:
GrabOn is running profitably for the last 4.5 years. The Grabon revenue is speculated to be around 4 million, $4.88 million to be precise, as recorded on December 31, 2019. GrabOn’s market share in India’s deal and coupons industry is 70-80%. The brand boasts of having 40 million subscribers, as of April 2020 and receives around 25 million page views.
Revenue model is based on coupon redemption, affiliate/performance marketing, direct partnerships with merchants, brand marketing services via their website, and Gift Cards sale. It is based on a cost-per-sale model generating revenue through end-user sale.
GrabOn – User Acquisition
GrabOn launched its services with an awareness that there is an existing gap in the industry concerning the coupon service provider. Hence, through individual referrals about the authentic deals available on GrabOn, its customers had naturally increased. The excellent user interface and state of the art coupon browsing experience have further promoted customer satisfaction and customer base expansion.
Post-launch GrabOn rolled out the Buzz Notification feature, which alerts users with the latest coupons, hottest offers, ongoing sale events, and limited-time exclusive deals. They were the first in the country to partner with Uber’s hot air balloon initiative during Diwali 2015. GrabOn’s partnership with ACT Fibernet has allowed them to expand their services across India by leveraging ACT Fibernet’s country-wide network. Their subsequent tie-ups with Paytm and Mobikwik have also proved fruitful.
Grabon coupons user
GrabOn – Startup Challenges
One of the major challenges faced was providing a seamless coupon browsing experience to the user.
While most of the existing companies ran their website on a cookie-cutter script, we started designing our website from scratch with a customer-first mindset. Our non-intrusive design and lack of irritating pop-ups were rewarded by the customers.
GrabOn team strives to keep the platform updated, keeping in tune with user requirements. GrabOn launched the industry-first Buzz Notification feature, which was one of the experiments that worked out really well in company’s favor. After that, they kept on experimenting, and the latest one is in-app Coupon and Cab Finder, which helps the user find coupons for food, entertainment, recharge, and cab-hailing directly from our GrabOn app without switching between apps.
GrabOn – Awards and Achievements
Recognized as a trailblazing startup within months of launch, by CNBC, YourStory, Business Standard, Inc42 and more.
GrabOn’s efforts were recognized by IBM during the Startup Star award in 2016.
GrabOn’s website won the ‘Best Design’ award at the HYSEA Annual Awards 2016.
Winner of Future Group’s Retail Startup Awards, 2017
Winner of the Entrepreneur of the year (IT, Internet & Telecommunication) Industry Award from Asia Pacific Entrepreneurship Awards in 2018.
Ranked 266th among 1000 High-Growth Companies in the Asia Pacific region, 2018 in a survey conducted by the Financial Times in association with Statista.
Winner of Tech Companies to watch out for at BW Business world #TechTors, 2018.
Winner of the High Growth Startup Award, at TiE-ISB Connect 2017.
Some of GrabOn’s biggest achievements so far include –
It introduced industry’s first Buzz Notification feature which alerted the users about the latest coupons, hottest deals, ongoing sales, etc.
GrabOn Savings App launched with innovative features such as Coupon and Cab Finder
Collaborations with successful movies viz. Bareilly Ki Barfi, Half Girlfriend, Naam Shabana, and more.
Onboarded top players across several verticals like Truecaller, PhonePe, PayPal, NPCI, IndusInd Bank, ICICI Bank, SpiceJet, TruJet.
Launched GrabOn Gift Cards and sold over a million e-Gift Cards since the operation started.
GarbOn has helped over 3000+ brands in the past 6 years. It has become the #1 player in the coupons and deals industry and retained the position organically. Their strength lies in understanding the user behavior and presenting the most refined shopping deals, right when they need it. Every aspect of its business is centered around the audience. The trust of its merchant partners follows automatically as they have been able to provide them with the highest ROI year on year. Its Loyalty Engagement Partners are Vodafone, ACT Fibernet, Spiceject, Idea, Jio, Saavn, trujet, ICICI bank, IndusInd Bank, DBS, Apollo, Truecaller, MI and others. GrabOn also boasts of a robust client base, with clients like, Paytm, Amazon, Uber, Mobikwik, Foodpanda, OYO, Ola, GoDaddy, BigBasket, Flipkart, Dominos, PhonePe.
The company currently has plans to introduce a 1-2 year subscription-based loyalty program. GrabOn’s vision is to grow from coupons and deals market leaders to one of the top 10 digital transactions companies in India by 2020. With over 25 million page views per month and more than 40 million subscribers, GrabOn is right up there with the e-Commerce giants. The foray into Gift Cards space has already started to bring in some significant traction with more than million e-Gift Cards already sold and counting.
GrabOn – FAQs
What is GrabOn?
GrabOn provides the user with the latest deals, offers, coupons, and discounts across categories like Fashion, Food, Travel, Recharge, Entertainment, and more
How much is the Revenue of GrabOn?
GrabOn is running profitably for the last 4.5 years. The company’s revenue is around $4.8 million (FY19). With a userbase of 40 million subscribers, GrabOn’s market share in India’s deal and coupons industry is 70-80%.
Who is the Founder of GrabOn?
Ashok Reddy is the Founder and CEO of GrabOn.
How does GrabOn make money?
GrabOn’s revenue model is based on coupon redemption, affiliate/performance marketing, direct partnerships with merchants, brand marketing services via their website, and Gift Cards sale. It is based on a cost-per-sale model generating revenue through end-user sale.
Paytm is now booming huge potential in e-commerce platform, offering online payments, Recharges, flight booking, Railway tickets, movie tickets, etc. So, people look for coupons to get some extra discounts. Hence, here is the list of websites to check for paytm offers.
Cashkaro.com
Cashkaro.com is the one of top-rated India’s no 1 cashback and coupons website. Save cashback on leading Indian and international brands, cashback partners like myntra, Flipkart, snap deal, Jabong, and more than 500+ partners. All you need to just log in through cashkaro.com, search offers and click on to regarding offers and it will redirect you to the respective website and apply the coupons and get cashback.
CashKaro
Grabon.in
Grabon.in is India’s top 250 coupons website. They are offering coupons, promos, offers from many partnered e-commerce websites like Paytm, bookmyshow, freecharge, Domino’s, OYO Rooms and more. Presently, they have 3474 merchants associated.
Coupondunia is the destination for deals, discounts, coupons from top Indian ecommerce websites like amazon, Flipkart, etc. Coupondunia bring smart savings as a cashback offers from favorite websites. Their goal is to make savings smartly in a wide range of products from various sites like myntra, jabong, food, dining, travel, etc. As they stated that India is believing in saving smartly online and look into saving on their favorite website.
Coupondunia
Promocodeclub.com
Promocodeclub.com is India’s biggest promo codes coupons website which offers all kind of Recharges offers, eBay.in coupons, deals, discounts, and more. Recharges include like paytm, freecharge, mobiKwik, etc. They are now 200th Rank in India.
Promocodeclub
Coupons.oneindia.com
Coupons.oneindia is India’s all in one local language news portal, they are offering coupons as the feed to get to know about deals, discounts from various e-commerce platform.
Couponraja.in is the website offering updated coupon codes and promotional codes. They collaborate with 1000+ retailers. All you need to do is buy from favourite website and add coupons from couponraja to get benefited cashback offers, deals, discounts etc. Today Couponraja.in provides coupons worth over 100 lakhs in the industry.
Couponraja
Coupondekho.co.in
Coupondekho is the one of the largest web portal offering cashback, coupons deals, and discounts on wide range of merchants including amazon.in, flipkart.com, snapdeal.com and more. They provides coupons for 1000+ brands in India.
Coupondekho
Gopaisa.com
Gopaisa is the cashback and coupons website providing coupons for extensive range of products and services. Gopaisa offers cashback through several retailers. You just need to browse products and gopaisa will redirect you to the merchant’s website and apply cashback coupons and add it to savings.
Couponhaat.in is the India’s leading coupons deals portal. They are offering best deals at affordable prices from the online eCommerce merchants. They also feature freebies, and discounted coupons. Couponhaat provides unique coupons for the savings that cashback offers to users.
Couponhaat
Couponrani.com
Couponrani is India’s leading coupon website that helps online shoppers in saving more through shopping. Couponrani provides exclusively coupons, deals, cashback offers to users. They started their service from 2012. Couponrani merchants includes eCommerce platforms like amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeal, and recharge offers like paytm, freecharge and more.
Back in 2010, nobody even had the slightest of thought that like you can share videos over the internet, one would also be able to carry monetary transactions over the phone, at just one click. Amongst the early ones to exploit this idea and pioneer the evolution of digital payments were Kunal Shah and Sandeep Tandon by launching Freecharge in 2010.
Freecharge is a digital payment portal that enables users to do activities as mobile recharges, pay bills, etc. The interesting part starts here- Freecharge is backed by solid Cashback offers from various Indian Retailers both Online and Offline. Freecharge is one of the most promising startups in Indian history.
At the application, payments are done under 10 seconds which drives the vision of the company successfully of enabling customers with world-class and less time-consuming services, that too coupled with cashback and offers which leads to amazing customer experience.
Kunal Shah, Co-founder- Kunal is an entrepreneur in the truest form. He is an MBA dropout by choice from Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS), has a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Philosophy from the Wilson College and got into the buying selling dynamic way early. He decided not to join his family business and joined as a Programmer in a BPO firm. There on, he funded himself for 14 years selling Pirated CDs, Cards, etc. Kunal is also an investor. He has invested in 40-50 startups like TableHero, Razorpay, LifCare, and Zilingo.
Sandeep Tandon, Co-founder- Sandeep Tandon is a technology entrepreneur and also an angel investor. He has done his bachelors and masters from the University of South California. To this day, he is amongst the board of members of CRED, a partner at Whiteboard Capital to only name a few of his ventures.
Freecharge – How did it start?
All of this happened around 2009 when Kunal decided to sign the papers and start his own venture called Paisaback. Paisaback was created by him on the grounds of Cash Back in those days. The idea was to tie up with localized centers of companies like McDonald’s, Barista Coffee, Dominos, Croma to offer great cashback deals to the customers which were referred by his venture, Paisaback.
Though the idea was brilliant, it didn’t last long. It primarily got defeated by online players like Mysmartprice, CouponDunia, and others. And eventually, he realized that for this idea to work, the conventional business models have to come to an end and he will have to come up with something new to disrupt the system. This fueled his entrepreneurial spirit and he went on to design a profitable model for Freecharge leaving Paisaback behind.
Freecharge – Startup Launch
After Paisaback, Kunal drew an insight that recharges were the new black. He researched a bit and found that 95% of invoices of a mobile store belonged to recharges. Both the co-founders then got into the development of the product.
Sandeep being an engineer, both of them had a great experience while developing the product. And finally, Freecharge was launched on Aug 15, 2011. One of their initial partners were McDonald’s and which helped them grow rapidly.
Freecharge – Competitors
Right after they launched, in 2012, the competition sky-rocketed through other applications such as Rechargeitnow and PayTM. And then in 2015, the competition ramped up as mobile phones took over as the preferred medium. And that time, 80% of the Freecharge transactions were taking place on mobiles. They had to find a new way forward to prevent the company from fizzling out.
Freecharge – Funding and Investors
The startup economy knew that Freecharge will hit it high when Sequoia Capital, India’s one of the biggest investors, decided to invest in the company for its seed funding round in 2010. The amount still remains undisclosed.
Between 2011 to 2017, Freecharge took up 6 additional rounds of funding, roping in $177.6 million in total, which clearly marked them as the startup darling. Over this course, Freecharge had six prominent investors namely Sequoia Capital India, RTP global, Snapdeal, Valiant Capital Partners, and Sofina.
Started with recharges and paying utility bills. Expanded and made couponing a possibility in 2012.
From having McDonald’s, Dominoes, and CCD on board for redeeming coupons to e-commerce platforms such as BookMyShow, Jabong, and Myntra, Freecharge grew with the trends
Average daily transactions- More than 40,000
Average daily transaction value- More than 60,000,00
Total wallet holders on Freecharge- 52 million
Freecharge – Mergers and Acquisitions
In 2015, Freecharge was acquired by Snapdeal for $400 Million which comes to ₹2600 Crore. This was the second-largest acquisition after Goibibo’s acquisition of MakeMyTrip.
In early 2019, Axis Bank acquired Freecharge. This acquisition got Freecharge out of the shackles of a struggling owner like Snapdeal. And Axis bank got access to the vast wallet holders of Freecharge.
Tanusha Verma
